I know we’re coming up on Valentine’s day and that tends to make folks all couple-y but I’m going the other way. This week I’m doing a two part series on successful casual sex relationships! Here’s Part 1, Enjoy!

I love having friends with benefits! No strings attached sex with someone who I’m comfortable with? Awesome! The thing is, because so many of us were taught that committed relationships were the goal of all sex, this is new territory for a lot of folks and that can lead to trouble. With that in mind, I’ve put together this handy list of 5 Keys to Successful Friends With Benefits Relationships to help you keep your FWB time WTF free:

Respect- Sometimes folks get so tripped up on making sure nobody “gets the wrong idea” that they end up handling their FWBs roughly -constantly reminding them often that they “aren’t actually into” them. Folks, that’s rude and insulting. Seriously, there are few ickier things than telling someone that they are lacking in your eyes while you are genitally fused. Treat each other well.

Communication–We just talked about how people end up being rude when trying to avoid the thing where one person thinks they are heading towards couplehood and the other thinks they’re having fun andI can’t tell you how many bad fwb stories I hear that involve one person saying “I can’t believe she stopped sleeping with me, I didn’t even know she was seeing anyone!” and that, along with a whole lot of other problems can be avoided with communication. Talk to each other about your boundaries, about what’s going on in your dating life – keep everyone on the same page.

Friendship– A lot of folks miss this one. They stumble into being “friends” with benefits because they meet someone, there’s an attraction, one of them isn’t really interested in dating and they say “fine we’ll be friends with benefits” but there’s no actual friendship. Conventional wisdom says that once sex enters the equation you cannot really build a “friendship” I call shenanigans on that and thisPsychology Today piece has some evidence to back me up. In a survey of 300 people when asked what having sex with their friends did to the friendship “About 76 percent of those who “went there” with a friend said the relationship got better. Better! Okay, the reality is about half of these folks started dating their friend after the fun, even though that wasn’t their original intention. But the other half kept on as friends—friends who said the “quality of the friendship bond increased. ”

Non-monogamy– Now, I know, this is counter-intuitive as lots of FWB situations are born out of folks who are in need of sex deciding to have it with each other but when your bed buddy is the only thing going on in your sexual life it’s easy for that person to become the entire embodiment of your sex life and then, of course, you fixate. Maintaining your dating/sex life elsewhere allows you to enjoy your time with your friend without relying on it for all your sexual release, validation affection etc.